My dad

My dad got pneumonia and was admitted to the hospital in March. He quickly suffered multiple complications, went into septic shock, and suffered strokes. After being on a ventilator and unconscious for 2 months, the doctors told us it didn't look like he would improve much beyond his comatose state. We came to terms with the idea that our dad was going to die, but then he began to recover unexpectedly. I had spent a month in California meeting with doctors, monitoring his progress, coordinating the dissemination of information on his health to family and friends. I was in a haze, as my brothers and I also coordinated shifting the caseload of his law practice, paying his utility bills and basically doing all the things it takes to run a person's life.

When my dad started to come to, he couldn't talk because he had a tracheostomy. He would grasp the nurses' hands and look at them intently and mouth out "Thank you." He didn't say that to me, although he did kiss my hand. He gained more consciousness and awareness with time. One day I went to visit and a friend of his was in his room, waiting to meet me for coffee. When I walked in, I was arguing with my brother on the phone, who wanted to sell the furniture in my dad's apartment, and give up the lease to save money while my dad recuperated at a rehabilitation center for around 6 months.

My dad was angrily trying to say something to me. I moved closer to read his lips. He mouthed "waiting for you." I said "Who?" And motioned with his head towards his friend who was waiting for me and gave me an exasperated look. I was early to meet the friend, but that's not the point. The point is that you can never do enough for an alcoholic. After all the time and energy I put into caring for him. I sat by his bedside, holding his hand and talking to him while he was unconscious because the doctor said it might help. I brought his CDs from home and played them for him. I told him stories and when I ran out of things to say, I just told him about what flavor of frozen yogurt I would eat when I left the hospital. And when I left to come back to New York, a friend of his asked him if he missed me and he made a talky motion with his hands and rolled his eyes, as if to say that I talked too much.

It was really painful for me when I got home to feel like all my effort was not recognized or appreciated. But it really shouldn't be surprising, because it never was. So many nurses, doctors, friends and associates of my dad told me how lucky he was to have a daughter like me when he was unconscious. And I kept finding myself hoping that they would tell him that when he came to instead of me. But it doesn't matter if they all told him that, it doesn't mean that he would hear it.

I am so grateful that my dad is alive. It means that we have the opportunity to work on our relationship. I know I can recover from all of this pain and damage done to me and my thought processes and feelings without anyone in my family's support. But in order for my relationship with my dad to recover, he would have to recover too. He's only sober right now because he's still in a rehabilitation center and now he has cirrhosis. So, it's exciting that for the first time in my life, my dad is sober. But it's also scary. I am just grateful for the opportunity. However it plays out is not something I control. I can try to have conversations with my father and he can choose to do whatever he wants with that.

Untitled - written 7/20/09

wallpaper
a floral design
dainty taste
of stained lace

family portrait
the corners roll up
haunted faces
before we were grown up

hollowed cheeks
absent eyes
do as you're told
so we all donned smiles

just to make sure
just to be certain
the neighbors believe
we're a nice family

so the flash goes off
now quick close the curtain
before they look in
and get a chance to see

Family Roles

Just uncovering some more stuff from my past in thinking about the roles we played as a family. My dad had the starring role as the alcoholic. What's fascinating to me is how that upsets and distorts everyone else around the "star." So my mom was frustrated, angry, negative, stressed and controlling. The oldest child in my family, "Peter," was the so-called perfect child. He was an athlete, went out with pretty girls, and got into a prestigious university. So then the middle child in my family, "John" was a drug addict. And little old me, the youngest was the peacemaker, the scapegoat. Whatever.

My mom was so angry and unhappy about her lot in life that she took it out on me. But why me? I just realized. Peter was far too perfect. How could you take out your anger on someone who was such a perfect child? And John, well he had a very serious problem. How can you take your anger out on someone who is so sick and especially considering that you're worried about said child ALL the time? The range of John's problems ran the gamut from run-ins with the law to running away to expulsions from school to being stabbed and winding up in the ICU. And then there was me. I wasn't a straight-A student and I didn't have a huge problem to compell everyone to take it easy on me either. So I was an easy target. My brothers followed suit in directing blame and anger towards me - the bottom feeder. I was punished far more severely than John for minor infractions.

Going across the street to McDonalds when I said I would be at Taco Bell -grounded 1 week

Failing 8th grade math - grounded the ENTIRE summer and I had to make the class up in summer school. And now that I am recovering, I wonder, how did my parents allow me to fail a class when I was only 13? I shouldn't have been allowed to make that sort of a choice for myself. They had no idea what was going on at school.

Making friends with a few girls in junior high my mom didn't like - banned from seeing them. They were not allowed to my house and I was not allowed to meet up with them outside.

And yet I saw my brother tell far taller tales than which fast food chain he ate at. I saw him get kicked out of schools and skipping classes and he didn't get punished at all. I saw him hanging out with friends who used with him. I grew up with a sense of very personal injustice. I quite literally could not do anything right. And when John did everything wrong, there was no consequence. The phrase "It's not fair" is like my mantra. I know I need to change that. I'm not a victim and I want to break the cycle of being comfortable in relationships with people where I feel undervalued and unjustly blamed.

Anyway, these roles in my family still persist today. John, after going to rehab at 16 and relapsing until he was 25, finally decided to join the army. He spent a year and a half in Iraq and these same dynamics were perpetuated. Everyone was worried sick about John and Peter got his MBA and landed a lucrative finance job. John is now out of the army and going to school on the G.I. bill. When I visit home, everyone is so enamored with Peter's super-success, his travels, his quest to buy a home. And everyone is so relieved that John is alive and well after all the ways it could have turned out. And my mom still takes out her anger on me. It's amazing how the saner you get, the more insanity you see.

Repressed Anger

One of the things that really hurt and surprised me as I began to go through the recovery process - well first a word on recovery. So I'm new to all this stuff and am just now embracing the word "recover" at all, and here's my understanding of it so far.

First, I was open to learning about Adult Children of Alcoholics and curious about the idea that growing up in the kind of home that I did could have had a lasting effect on me today in relationships, work, and life in general. Then, I educated myself through books, websites, and after I got the nerve up - Al-Anon meetings. As I educated myself, I began to remember things and put them into a framework of things that families of alcoholics do and feel. I was able to look at my memories in a new way and think, "That was my mom in denial." Or... "That was my dad and his alcoholism demanding perfection from me." It was really liberating to be able to understand so many interactions by thinking of them from an educated viewpoint instead of from the viewpoint of a little girl who had no idea why these people who were supposed to love and support her were always so angry.

And then I started to feel really angry and sorry for myself. Most of my anger was targeted at my mom, which was weird to me, because she wasn't the alcoholic. But, since we now have what I would have previously described as a close relationship, I had blocked out a lot of my memories of her and the hurtful way she treated me. My dad's problems were more obvious to me, as was my anger toward him. I was angry at him most of my life, but as I've gotten older, I've felt more protective and sympathetic toward him, so maybe round 2 of repressed anger will be for him. We'll see. As these memories came back to me - sometimes hazily and sometimes in razor sharp flashes, I remembered how unavailable my mom was to me and how much it hurt growing up.

My dad was an alcoholic and the younger of my 2 older brothers, "John" was a drug addict by the age of 13. Clearly, my mom had her plate full, and around the time they sent John off to Hazelden in Minnesota for rehab, my mom decided to leave my dad. My mom told me recently that she started going to Al-Anon meetings around 1990 and eventually left my dad in 1996, between the years I was in 8th and 9th grades. Needless to say, this was a tumultuous time at home for everyone.

What really angered me though, was that my mom sought help in a fellowship and got herself out of a toxic relationship, but I feel that she left me behind. I split time between my mom and dad, and after my dad got physically violent with me one day, I stayed with her for most of the time from when I was around 16 on. So, it's not that she left me behind physically. But, she got help for herself, and she got John help through counseling, expensive rehab programs, etc. and it felt like since I didn't have an urgent diagnosis, I didn't get anything. It was as though by removing herself from the situation, she solved all the problems, but that didn't do anything for me and my relationship with my father.

She never offered to get me a therapist or bought me a book about alcoholism or even really sat down to talk to me about how I felt about everything that was going on. I know she mentioned Alateen to me and asked if I wanted to go, but I was so lost inside myself that I didn't have any idea what I needed and I just told her that I didn't have a drinking problem - dad did. I know I was stubborn as a teenager and she told me so many times herself. But now looking back on it, I didn't accept things that she offered because I harbored a lot of resentment and pain. I wish she had tried more, pushed more, because now I'm 27 and I've never dealt with any of this and I'm learning now that it doesn't go away on its own. I was the scapegoat of the family - more on that later. But basically my parents blamed many little things on me instead of accepting responsibility for the elephants in the room.

As I thought more about my interactions with my mom growing up, I couldn't remember a single positive thing that she had told me from the 6th grade on. She said I dressed like an orphan (grunge was in), I was an embarassment to the family, my friends were rude, my room was dark and messy, I was irresponsible (got that one a lot), I didn't put on makeup correctly, I was selfish, etc. The same messages came from my dad too, but I had forgotten how much my mom played into the negativity. I'm not as angry now as I was when I first started having these memories, but it still brings tears to my eyes as I write this.